The Music Makers, Op. 69
The Music Makers, Op. 69

Author: Arthur O'Shaughnessy

Publisher: Serenissima Music, Inc.

Published: 2007-10-30

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13: 9781932419580

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This 35-minute work is sometimes thought of as Elgar's answer to his contemporary Richard Strauss' tone poem "Ein Heldenleben." It was given its premiere at the Birmingham Music Festival on Oct. 1, 1912 with the composer at the podium. Elgar quotes extensively from his own previous works throughout. This new vocal score is an unabridged digitally-enhanced reprint of the one issued by Novello & Co., Ltd. in 1912, enlarged to a more readable A4 size. A welcome addition for Elgar enthusiasts, alto soloists, choruses, and pianists. Matching full score and orchestra parts also available from Serenissima Music.

Reading Elgar’s The Music Makers
Reading Elgar’s The Music Makers

Author: David Young

Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers

Published: 2024-11-08

Total Pages: 108

ISBN-13: 1035853280

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Elgar’s The Music Makers, for contralto solo, choir and large orchestra, has experienced a chequered reputation since its 1912 premiere at the Birmingham Festival. The work faced significant adverse criticism which re-emerged over time. Criticism targeted the poem Elgar chose for his setting – Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s ode, whose reputation was later tarnished by T.S. Eliot’s infamous critique ‘What is Minor Poetry?’. Misunderstanding of Elgar’s innovatory compositional procedure was another main reason behind the negative responses. Elgar integrated the poetic language with musical self-borrowings, transforming the words and offering perceptive listeners enhanced emotion at the highest artistic level. All aspects of Elgar’s musical language combine to produce one of his greatest, yet least understood, masterworks. Reading Elgar’s The Music Makers brings to the fore a prime example of how first musical performances can be misunderstood and reception can shift over time. The work remains as relevant today as ever. The book’s multi-faceted approach will be invaluable not only for conductors, singers and music students, but for concert goers and music lovers generally.

A Conductor's Guide to Choral-Orchestral Works
A Conductor's Guide to Choral-Orchestral Works

Author: Jonathan D. Green

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 0810847205

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Surveys large choral-orchestral works written between 1900 and 1972 that contain some English text. Green examines eighty-nine works by forty-nine composers, from Elgar's Dream of Gerontius to Bernstein's Mass.

Conducting Elgar
Conducting Elgar

Author: Norman Del Mar

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 9780198165576

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This is the final book in the series on orchestral conducting that Norman Del Mar had been writing until his death in February 1994. As with the previous books, each chapter is devoted to a specific work, and once again all the major orchestral works of this important composer are covered. The book culminates in an important study of The Dream of Gerontius completed by his son Jonathan, himself a conductor. Norman Del Mar was renowned in his generation as an interpreter of English music and in particular for his understanding of Elgar's music. His explanations of the subtleties of guiding an orchestra through these magnificent scores are an invaluable help to all those who seek to clarify this elusive music. Elgar's own recordings are frequently consulted but not always accepted.

Choral Repertoire
Choral Repertoire

Author: Dennis Shrock

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 929

ISBN-13: 0197622402

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"Choral Repertoire is the definitive and comprehensive one-volume presentation of the most significant composers and compositions of choral music from the Western Hemisphere throughout recorded history. The book is designed for multiple uses-as a programming guide for practicing conductors, instructional resource for students and teachers of choral music, historic and stylistic reference for choral singers, and source of information about composers and compositions for choral enthusiasts-and as such, the book intends to further and make accessible important information relevant to the vast scope of choral music. Organized by era (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Modern), Choral Repertoire covers general characteristics of each historical era, trends and styles unique to various countries, biographical sketches of more than six hundred composers, and performance annotations of more than five thousand individual works. Of the composers, there is substantive coverage of women and composers of color, and of the repertoire, there is inclusion of lesser-known works as well as those works that are considered standard"--

British Music and Literary Context
British Music and Literary Context

Author: Michael Allis

Publisher: Boydell Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1843837307

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Despite several recent monographs, editions and recordings devoted to the reassessment of British music in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, some negative perceptions still remain--particularly a sense that British composers in this period somehow lacked literary credentials. British Music and Literary Context counters this perception by showing that these composers displayed a real confidence and assurance in refiguring literary texts in their music. The book explores how a literary context might offer modern audiences and listeners a 'way in' to appreciate specific works that have traditionally been viewed as problematic. Each chapter of this interdisciplinary study juxtaposes a British composer with a particular literary counterpart or genre. Issues highlighted in the book include the vexed relationship between words and music, the refiguring of literary narratives as musical structures, and the ways in which musical settings or representations of literary texts might be seen as critical 'readings' of those texts. Anyone interested in nineteenth-century British music, literature and Victorian studies will enjoy this thought-provoking and perceptive book.

Music, Modern Culture, and the Critical Ear
Music, Modern Culture, and the Critical Ear

Author: Nicholas Attfield

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-11-20

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 1317091655

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In his 1985 book The Idea of Music: Schoenberg and Others, Peter Franklin set out a challenge for musicology: namely, how best to talk and write about the music of modern European culture that fell outside of the modernist mainstream typified by Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern? Thirty years on, this collected volume of essays by Franklin’s students and colleagues returns to that challenge and the vibrant intellectual field that has since developed. Moving freely between insights into opera, Volksoper, film, festival, and choral movement, and from the very earliest years of the twentieth century up to the 1980s, its authors listen with a ‘critical ear’: they site these musical phenomena within a wider web of modern cultural practices - a perspective, in turn, that enables them to exercise a disciplinary self-awareness after Franklin’s manner.